Bullets & Bridges
by kingpintales
Summary: Futurefic. Jack Shephard gave up a lot to get off the island, not the least of which was his own humanity.


**Title:** Bullets & Bridges  
**Chapter:** 1 of ? - Ghost  
**Characters/Fandom:** Jack Shephard (LOST)  
**Thanks:** My beta, kmousie.  
**Disclaimer:** Sadly, no.  
**Genre:** Dark!fic, almost noir-like in atmosphere.  
**Warnings:** (Sex, Violence, & Language)  
**Premise:** Future-fic. Jack Shephard gave up a lot to get off the island, not the least of which was his own humanity.

**Bullets & Bridges**

**Chapter 1: Ghost**

He came quickly, as usual. She wasn't done yet, and he didn't care. Her red curly hair stuck to her face with sweat, and she groaned angrily as he pulled himself from her. She reached for him, but he evaded her grasp.

"Hey!" she shouted at him, her whiskey voice thick with annoyance. But he was already pulling on his jeans and halfway to the bathroom. "Son of a bitch!" she cried and sat up, pulling the white sheet over her bare breasts.

The sound of her protests and something, probably a shoe, hitting the door were muffled by the running water of the faucet. Jack Shephard washed his hands in the sink and splashed water onto his face. He had barely broken a sweat. He looked at his watch sitting on the counter next to the basin, between his cigarettes and lighter. One-thirty. Bars were still open.

He heard the sound of the door swinging open and looked at her standing there. She walked in awkwardly, the sheet wrapped around her making it difficult to walk.

"You weren't finished," she said.

What was her name? He couldn't remember. It didn't matter. "Oh, I'm pretty sure I was finished," he said with a grin.

"Well, I'm pretty damn sure you weren't," she retorted and stepped in front of the sink, pressing herself to him. She grinned, feeling him harden even through the rough material of his jeans.

He groaned, almost in annoyance more than desire. But his body betrayed him as she reached into his still unzipped pants for him. He grabbed her arms roughly, lifting her at first and then pushing her forcefully onto the counter. He kissed her then – not a tender kiss, but an angry one that would leave her lips red and sore afterwards.

She pushed his jeans off of his hips as she wrapped her legs around him. He grabbed her waist forcefully, pulling her to him, and thrust inside of her. She practically yelped into his mouth and threw her head back, breaking their hasty kiss.

Toiletries and trash were pushed aside, falling to the floor and into the sink, as he drove into her repeatedly – feeling nothing, as before. She braced herself against the counter with one hand and held tightly to his back with the other. His ragged breaths felt hot against her neck. Lifting her head, she met his distant gaze. Before, in bed, he had his eyes closed. Now, they were open wide and staring not at her, but through her.

He continued to thrust faster than before, and she felt a familiar pull at her insides. She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip, trying to block out that cold stare, shuddering as she came. He growled quietly in her ear moments later as he felt his own release.

He pulled himself limply from her body and yanked up his jeans, which had fallen just below his buttocks. When the cool air hit her skin, she instinctively covered herself again with the sheet, which had fallen to the counter at her sides in the shuffle.

He turned away from her, ready to book. But then he remembered that it was his room. It was a crappy hotel in the shittiest part of Memphis, but it was his room. He could afford better, but he had paid for it. If anybody was going to leave, it was going to be her. So he just stood there.

"You should go," he said bitterly, without looking at the fiery redhead on is bathroom counter – the one he'd just fucked but could hardly acknowledge as a human being.

She hopped off the counter and shoved the sheet into his face, standing there naked. He subconsciously picked apart her flaws. She was beautiful, but he would hurt her if he needed to. Words were worse, and she would leave. It would be easier to forget that way. He nodded towards the door. "Now."

"You're a real piece of work, Jack," she grumbled as she gathered her things, slipping her black dress over her head. And she was gone.

He filled a tumbler with the last of the whiskey they'd carried from the bar. It tasted like liquid fire. He pushed it down his throat, slammed the glass on the counter, and opened the sliding door to the balcony.

She walked to her car in the parking lot below, angry footsteps in cheap shoes drifting into the wet sky, muffled by the humidity. _Lucy,_ he remembered her name as she drove off. She had sought him out at the bar earlier that night. He thought she was pretty, in a superficial kind of way, that red hair of hers flashing like a flag in front of a bull. She was already drunk when she bumped into him by the bathrooms, and it wasn't long before they were headed back to his hotel, making the night clerk blush at their gross displays. If he remembered right, she was already working her hand down his pants before he could get the door unlocked.

He sat down in the rain-soaked plastic lawn chair, the still water seeping through his jeans and cool against his skin. He heard the clink of a lighter from below and saw the red cherry of a cigarette coming from a dark corner of the parking lot. He shifted in his seat, trying to make out the silhouette under that darkened archway, but the figure moved quietly into the shadows, unseen, but still there – watching him.

He owed the world, and wouldn't be surprised if it'd finally caught up with him. He'd gotten the feeling that this pit stop had lasted a shade too long. Too bad.

Most people didn't have the stomach for this southern town, but Jack had come to appreciate the lilting accent of its inhabitants, the smell of barbecue and the smallness of its people. Most big cities thought they were bigger than themselves. Not Memphis. He had acquired a taste for riverboat gambling and southern blues. The blues never got him into trouble, but the gambling had. And it was about time to move on.

Jack had only ever had one vice in his life – a gift from his father, as he liked to think of it. Christian Shephard was nothing if not a thorough drunk. And Jack never really understood his father's need for all those dusty bottles – scotch, whiskey, imported, aged, whatever – when he was alive. But things change. Now, cigarettes, gambling and cheap women could be added to that list.

His father had taught him many useful things – among them how to remain detached. It wasn't a trait he'd always embraced. Resisted was more like it. Now, he lived by it.

He was in the world, but not of the world. He was a ghost, a wanderer. And he was seeking something he could never have. It wasn't because the screams inside his head would never stop. And it wasn't because he felt guilty. He didn't. People died because of him. People died so he could go home. When he'd asked for that, he hadn't known the price. And the question that weighed on him was this: _if he had known, would he have chosen differently?_ No. It was a definitive answer, and it had taken him a long time to reach it. But, the truth was that he would have done it all the same. Blood on his hands, and still. What price can you put on freedom?

Times were he would have done anything rather than admit his father, the drunk, the spinal surgeon, the heartless mentor, the chief of surgery, was right all along about life and about the nature of heroes. But there it was.


End file.
